Shadow Queen

by Unknown

  Shuddering, I ducked into my tent, pausing to blink in the dim interior. My thoughts whirred. I wanted no more than to rip off the veil binding and obscuring me, blurring what people saw of me.

  Before I could do anything I was struck hard in the shoulder and I fell, the veil tangling around my throat, my hands scrabbling in vain for purchase. The floor slammed into my spine and an elbow speared the soft flesh under my ribcage.

  I gasped for breath, pain bursting like stars in the back of my head as Amalia’s face hove into view. Fury and drink had turned her cheeks red as a burn. A tooth had cut her lip in the attack, and blood filmed the teeth she bared at me.

  Bucking under her weight, I freed an arm and grabbed her wrist, straining to keep her fingers, rigid as claws, from my face.

  With one elbow still planted firmly in my midsection, she lodged a palm under my chin and shoved it up until I thought my neck would pop and my lower jaw would drive through my face. Still she held silent.

  Scraping my heels under me, with a mighty heave I shoved her up and off. I tried to roll away, but the veil caught at my head, pulling me up short.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ breathed Amalia, grabbing at the cloth and yanking my head backward.

  My fingers scrabbled at the pins in the veil, tearing them loose, freeing me. The tent-flap was only an arm’s length away when Amalia’s shoulder drove into my back, forcing me down. I struggled and jerked like a landed fish, unable to reach the tent opening.

  She clapped a hand over my mouth before I could cry out. ‘How dare you,’ she hissed into my ear. ‘I’ll kill you. I’ll tear your black heart out.’

  Gripping a hairpin tight between the slippery pads of my fingers, I heaved my hand back and up, stabbing blindly.

  She yelped in surprise and pulled away, giving me room to wriggle free. I didn’t get far before she grabbed my ankle. I flipped to face her, kicking, but she avoided it easily.

  ‘Hel–!’ I screamed, before Amalia launched at me again, her paired fists driving through my midsection.

  ‘I’ll rip your tongue out first!’ she said, pouncing at my face, her fingers spread into talons.

  I scrambled backwards on hands and heels, but my skirts mired me. Her fingers raked my cheek, tearing at the soft corner of my mouth.

  I shoved at her face, felt the slide of her cheek beneath my fingers. Pushing up, I found the soft socket housing her eyes and jabbed.

  She twisted her head back, releasing her hold, her vision obscured by her watering eyes.

  Lunging to the side, I grabbed the first object which came to hand – a lantern, shuttered and unlit – and brandished it between us, ready to bludgeon her with it.

  Crouching, Amalia stared at me through narrowed eyes, still blinking away tears of pain, calculating her next move, mentally searching the room for weapons.

  If I could keep her distracted, I might be able to circle around to the entrance and freedom.

  So I talked. ‘Your brother isn’t angry,’ I said, though my arms still ached from where he’d gripped me.

  ‘He doesn’t need to be. He has me to take care of it for him,’ she snarled.

  ‘How fortunate,’ I replied, but my voice was too shaky to convey haughty sarcasm. Carefully, still holding out the lantern, I stood and inched towards the doorway. ‘Ever consider you’re simply in his way?’

  ‘I’m not the one who tried to have him killed.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, daring another surreptitious step. ‘If you want to kill me for being on the wrong side, try your best. But first, you’ll have to give up the betrayed act. I don’t owe either of you my loyalty.’

  She shook her head as if she pitied me. ‘You do, though. He’s your husband.’

  Surprise rooted my feet to the floor. ‘Is your head made of oak? He killed my family, remember?’

  ‘You chose to bind to him – after the coup,’ she replied, implacable.

  ‘It was that or die!’

  ‘If you wanted to play the opposing side, you should have picked the dying,’ Amalia insisted, eyes bloodshot. A heartbeat later she noticed the space I’d opened between us, and sprang at me.

  Yelling, I swung the lantern, cracking her in the temple. But it didn’t stop her hurtling into me and I collapsed beneath her once more. I landed a knee in her stomach, batting at her with the strength of desperation. Scrabbling and tumbling, we rolled out into the bright spill of sunshine.

  Tears of relief stung my eyes, and I forgot about the skirts tangling my legs, almost oblivious to the heavy weight of her landing on my back. Someone would see, someone would help –

  But no one moved forward.

  I registered a cold shiver at my throat as the touch of sharp steel.

  ‘Like I said,’ Amalia whispered, ‘you should have picked the dying.’

  ‘Lady Amalia,’ came Gerlach’s voice from nearby.

  I didn’t dare swallow as Amalia pressed the knife deeper against my throat.

  ‘Amalia,’ Gerlach said again. ‘Leave her. On your brother’s orders.’

  The knife didn’t move and I stared straight ahead, gasping in the scent of dry grass and damp dirt.

  ‘My brother can’t kill his wife,’ she said. ‘It would be wrong.’

  ‘Your brother doesn’t want her killed,’ said Gerlach.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she rasped, her every breath swelling and ebbing against my back. ‘But he should. She’s treasonous.’

  ‘Actually,’ came Dieter’s voice, entering the fray, ‘she just won me a valuable alliance.’

  Amalia didn’t answer and I felt her waver. At least, I prayed to all nine daughters of Turas that she was wavering.

  ‘I don’t want her dead, Mali,’ said Dieter softly. ‘Release her.’

  But her elbow only pressed down harder. ‘I’m doing this for you, Diet.’

  Dieter lunged forward, his arm snapping out to grab the blade. He wasn’t fast enough. Amalia drew it hard against my throat, parting my skin and releasing hot blood down my neck. Then there was a cry and her weight vanished from my back, the knife dropping to the ground.

  I struggled to my knees, groping at the slippery sheet of blood at my throat.

  Gerlach caught me as I swayed. Easing me down, he crouched beside me, pulling my hand from my throat so that he might see. ‘You’ll live. Come on,’ he said, one arm around my back helping me up and guiding me forward. ‘Let’s stitch you up.’

  ‘They’re both as crazy as each other,’ I said to him, though it hurt to talk.

  He met my eyes with a shake of his head. ‘He did warn you. And you did marry him.’

  ‘Why does everyone keep reminding me?’ I replied.

  ACT TWO

  UPON A DARKENING FLOOD

  FOURTEEN

  BACK IN DIETER’S tent, Gerlach peered down at me, pressing a wadded cloth to my throat.

  ‘Amalia says you’re not Tamoran,’ I said, the words popping out of my mouth without time for thought. It was hard to talk past the force of his hands.

  ‘You were fighting over theologies?’ said Gerlach. ‘Not that I’m advising against passion in your beliefs, you understand.’

  His voice sounded distant and faint to my ears. I must have lost a lot of blood. ‘Before,’ I whispered, an inadequate explanation. ‘The first binding wasn’t a Tamoran ceremony.’

  He lifted the wadded cloth to peer at the wound, just as quickly pushing it down again. ‘My people, and Dieter’s, come from the northwest –’

  ‘The Marsachen tribe,’ I interrupted with illogical happiness. ‘They turned away from the rest of the Turasi.’

  He accepted my lunatic cheer without qualm. ‘It would be more accurate to say they stayed Beneduin, while the other tribes turned to Tamor’s teachings.’

  ‘Is that where Dieter learnt his arcana?’ I asked, my voice slurring as drowsiness threatened to overcome me again. ‘From the Beneduin faith?’

  ‘No,’ said Gerlach.

  ‘Oh.’ I wanted to ask more, but
it was hard to concentrate. The words kept slipping away unformed.

  ‘He knows the lore of many nations,’ said Gerlach. ‘In my experience, however, he’s most fond of the knowledge he learned from the Amaer.’

  I nodded, and allowed my eyes to close. Someone had let the sunshine into the tent, I thought dreamily. The warmth was delicious, like sinking back onto baking sands.

  The names Gerlach had given me – Beneduin, Amaer – chased through my head while I slept.

  When next I opened my eyes it was Dieter’s face bending low over me.

  ‘You’ve quick reflexes,’ he said when he realised I’d woken.

  ‘Not quick enough,’ I said, an inexplicable shame burrowing through my chest.

  He thumbed the cut on my throat, his touch gentle, then re-dressed the wound, carefully winding a length of clean linen around my throat, before fastening it and kneeling back.

  I pushed up off the cot until I was sitting, a dull ache clutching at my throat and tension knotting my shoulders.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  The next part came harder. ‘I should have heeded your warning.’

  He pulled a blanket close and wrapped it around my shoulders. ‘Don’t be too grateful. If I’d let Mali kill you here, it would’ve dissolved the alliance and seen us all slaughtered. I acted out of simple prudence.’

  Humiliation stung my cheeks and I felt a flash of hatred for him.

  ‘The Skythes saw the tussle,’ said Dieter. ‘You’ll have to trot over and show them you’re okay. I told them it was a disagreement between sisters. The old woman was impressed, actually, to find you weren’t a weakling.’

  When I didn’t answer, he lifted my chin with the tip of his finger. With his other hand he held before my eyes a small glass vial filled with a dark red liquid – blood.

  ‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘I drew it while you slept.’

  ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘What do you need it for?’

  ‘I’m hoping I won’t,’ he said, drawing the vial away and tucking it into a pocket near his heart. ‘It’s clear, however, that you’re determined to make trouble. With the blood, I don’t need to be nearby to transform your brand. You remember your brand, don’t you, Matilde?’

  Silent, I looked up into his pale eyes.

  ‘I can turn you to clay no matter where you are,’ he warned. ‘Or I can think up a few other uses for the blood. But that’s neither here nor there. What you need to know, Matilde, is this: one wrong move against me, and I’ll finish what I started at Aestival.’

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Not with Dieter in the tent, a few breaths away, though he attended to his papers, not even bothering to watch me. This increased my terror – that I was so completely his he might even forget me. Curled up tight around my nauseated stomach, I couldn’t calm the sense of nervous anticipation that pervaded me.

  When eventually he stood, I watched him moving around, extinguishing the lanterns, progressively dimming the interior until only the red glimmer from the brazier traced the shadows around me. After a time, rustling told me he was peeling off his clothing in the dark, then he slipped into his bed on the other side of the brazier.

  Even after his breathing told me he slept, I lay awake, wondering over my fate.

  Two weeks before, my most pressing concern had been whether Grandmother would take me on the Aestival progression, and if I’d be able to conceal the clues, should one of my visions overcome me in the presence of the drightens. Now everyone dear to me was dead, slaughtered by my husband’s troops, and I was bound by a hex I could neither understand nor unravel. And should I reach for the shadows to escape Dieter’s binding, I risked a life in the cloisters of the mara.

  The idea gave me pause, however. The Nilofen had lauded Dieter’s military acumen, but would they be so sanguine about his brand on my brow, and the power it gave him over me? And the drightens, I knew, would not countenance a shadow-worker on the throne. It was a small chance, but it was all I had.

  I must have fallen asleep eventually, for between one blink and the next it was morning and a young boy was kneeling at my head, entreating me to wake.

  ‘Forgive me, my lady,’ he greeted my bleary stare. ‘The old Skythe lady claims you.’

  ‘Wait outside,’ I said, the effort of speaking, even quietly, paining my throat. ‘I’ll be ready in a moment.’

  Dieter stirred as I finished dressing, rolling over and revealing a glimpse of bare chest. I quickly turned away and fled the tent before he woke fully.

  Mathis and Gunther stood up as I appeared, both eyeing my bound throat. At least they didn’t question me; routine had settled that much into us.

  Stepping up from behind them, a Skythe girl beckoned me. Points of black and gold paint outlined her eyes and swept up the line of her temples. I joined her and she led me to her camp in silence. When we reached the small breakfast fire before Shadi’s tent, I expected the girl to continue on or perhaps vanish inside. Instead she knelt and peered into the pot resting over the embers, for all the world as if I didn’t exist.

  Emerging from her tent, Shadi took in my wounded throat and the soldiers behind me with a glance.

  ‘Sit,’ she said, waving me to a cushion on the ground some distance from both herself and the girl by the cookfire. My heart fell. There could be no soft speaking over such a distance.

  When Mathis and Gunther followed me, Shadi banished them. ‘Don’t crowd her! You’re a strange lot, aren’t you? Huddling beneath stone walls, always mobbing each other. Don’t your lungs ever ache for fresh air? Go, break your fast somewhere else. No harm will come to her in this camp.’

  Once they’d retired out of earshot, Shadi turned back to me.

  ‘See what your stone roofs do to you? They make you lazy, sleeping past the dawn. I hope my daughter never fell prey to such a custom,’ she said, a savage sorrow twisting her face.

  I had watched my family die. I had bargained and schemed and manipulated, biding my time until yesterday – only to earn a cut throat. I was through with being insulted.

  ‘Would you have preferred her to remain different to the people she chose?’ I said, although in truth I had no idea whether my mother had been in the habit of sleeping past dawn or not. ‘To be an outcast in her new home?’

  ‘Better that she had never chosen them,’ Shadi said, ladling some of the pot’s contents into a bowl worn smooth and dark by generations of hands.

  The food was a uniform mucky yellow colour, and had a curdled texture. It smelt burnt, hot and cinderous. Eggs, my first mouthful told me, flecked with onion and sprinkled with cheese, probably goat’s from the crumbly texture. It tasted better than it looked or smelled, though, and resolution flooded through me with every mouthful.

  ‘Nothing like eggs to put colour back into the flesh,’ said Shadi, watching me eat, ‘even for a creature so pale as you. I was beginning to think you were weak. You did lose the squabble, after all.’

  ‘Constrained, not weak,’ I said, savouring the final mouthful.

  ‘Bah! What is there to constrain you? You’ve the sky in your blood, the wind in your marrow, a strong husband.’

  Fury kept me silent.

  ‘Young Roshi here,’ she continued, gesturing towards the girl who’d fetched me. ‘She has constraints. Poor Roshi will relinquish all this’ – a sweep of her arm took in the tents, plains and sky – ‘to accompany you back to your stone boxes. Do you see her moping?’

  I made no reply, though I thought Roshi’s studied refusal to look up during this exchange did look rather like moping.

  ‘Of course not,’ Shadi said. ‘She knows what is due her kith. She will do her duty, without griping.’

  ‘I’m not griping, and I’m not shirking my duty,’ I snapped, weary of lectures. ‘Forgive me if I’m not thrilled about the turn my life has taken. Crawling on my hands and knees through my family’s blood has left me in no mood to be harangued by strangers.’
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br />   Shadi blinked, taken aback, and Roshi stared at me, the morning sunlight twinkling off the gold specks of paint around her eyes.

  At last I’d gotten through to them! The alliance would crumble around the man’s damnable ears while he slept.

  ‘We’re not strangers,’ said Roshi, in scandalised tones.

  ‘With everything I said, the “strangers” part is the most upsetting?’ I said, incredulous.

  ‘You came here seeking an alliance in the name of kinship, yet now you call us strangers,’ Roshi retorted, her eyes narrow and dark. ‘We’re not here to be claimed and dropped as it suits you!’

  ‘Nor are we lecturing,’ Shadi added.

  ‘With respect, buapi,’ said Roshi, turning a decidedly disrespectful look on the older woman, ‘you were lecturing her. She has that part of it right.’

  ‘Ingrates, the both of you,’ said Shadi, scowling. ‘Grandmothers should be listened to, not constantly interrupted. I’m sure I was never so rude as the both of you. How is it that I produced rude daughters who produced rude daughters?’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re straying off the point?’ I cried, battling to control the edge of hysteria in my voice.

  ‘What is the point?’ Roshi demanded, glowering.

  ‘There, you see? Rude daughters. Can’t you see the girl’s worried?’ Shadi said, rounding on Roshi. ‘Yet still you want to bicker –’

  ‘Enough!’ I cried, then stared them both down until I was sure I wouldn’t be interrupted. For a moment I studied Roshi, stunned by the revelation that she was my cousin, the daughter of my mother’s sister. Perhaps it was the paint, but I could trace no similarity to myself or my mother in her features, nor did I feel any kinship to her.

  I didn’t have time to explore it; the hex was the most important subject. Now that both Shadi and Roshi had calmed, I continued, speaking quietly but firmly.

  ‘I’m sorry you think so highly of my husband, both of you, because I suspect that will change,’ I said, after looking around to make sure Mathis and Gunther were still well out of earshot. ‘If the circumstances of our binding don’t trouble you,’ I continued, turning back to Shadi, ‘the truth of that night may.’